A story is told of Charles Lamb which, in view of actual facts, one
must necessarily disbelieve. It is to the effect that, dining out one
evening, he heard in an adjoining room the noise of many children. With
his glass filled, he rose from his chair and drank the toast, “Here’s
to the health of good King Herod.” Instinctively, those familiar with
Elia will recollect his “Dream Children,” and wonder how any critic
could reconcile the two attitudes. Lamb had an abiding love for young
people and a keen understanding of their natures.
As writers of juvenile literature, Charles (1775–1834) and Mary
(1765–1847) Lamb might never have been known, had it not been for
William Godwin (1756–1836) and his second wife. The two began a
publishing business, in 1805, under the firm name of M. J. Godwin
and Company. The only details that concern us are those which began
and ended with the Lambs and their work. Godwin, himself, under the
pseudonym of Baldwin, turned out literary productions of various kinds.
But though, during one period, there was every sign of a flourishing
trade, by 1822 the business was bankrupt.
The Lambs regarded their writings for children as pot-boilers; letters
from them abound with such confessions. But it was in their natures to
treat their work lovingly; their own personalities entered the text;
they drew generously upon themselves; and so their children’s books
are filled with their own experiences, and are, in many respects,
as autobiographical as the “Essays of Elia.” Mary undertook by far
the larger number of the volumes which are usually accredited to her
brother; in fact, wherever the two collaborated, Lamb occupied a
secondary place.
The following list indicates the division of labour:
THE KING AND QUEEN OF HEARTS, 1805. Lamb’s first juvenile work.
TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE, 1807. Lamb wrote to Manning, May 10, 1806:
“I have done ‘Othello’ and ‘Macbeth,’ and mean to do all the
tragedies. I think it will be popular among the little people,
besides money.”
ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES, 1808. “Intended,” as Lamb told Manning, “to
be an introduction to the reading of Telemachus; it is done out
of the ‘Odyssey,’ not from the Greek. I would not mislead you;
nor yet from Pope’s ‘Odyssey,’ but from an older translation of
one Chapman. The ‘Shakespeare Tales’ suggested doing it.” Lamb’s
delight in Chapman was as unalloyed as that of Keats.
MRS. LEICESTER’S SCHOOL, 1809. Issued anonymously, hence commonly
ascribed to Lamb. The greater part of the work belongs to Mary; it
seems to have been her idea originally. Lamb to Barton, January 23,
1824: “My Sister’s part in the Leicester School (about two-thirds)
was purely her own; as it was (to the same quantity) in the
Shakespeare Tales which bear my name. I wrote only the Witch Aunt,
the First Going to Church, and the final story about a little
Indian Girl in a Ship.”
POETRY FOR CHILDREN, 1809. Lamb claimed about one-third of the book as
his own. Mr. Lucas believes that Mrs. Godwin issued these verses to
compete with the Taylors and Adelaide O’Keeffe.
PRINCE DORUS OR FLATTERY PUT OUT OF COUNTENANCE, 1811. Robinson wrote:
“I this year tried to persuade him [Lamb] to make a new version of
the old Tale of Reynard the Fox. He said he was sure it would not
succeed--sense for humour, said L., is extinct.” “Prince Dorus” was
done instead.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, 1811. Authorship doubtful.
There is something keenly pathetic in noting the brother and sister
at work in the interests of children, hoping to add to their yearly
income--sitting down together and thinking out conceptions for their
juvenile poems and stories. Mary Lamb reveals, by those smaller
elements in her prose, a keener discernment of what a child’s book
should be; she is far more successful than her brother in entering into
the spirit of the little lives she writes about, while Lamb himself is
happiest in his touches where he is handling the literary subjects.[39]
But on the whole, Lamb’s style was not suited to the making of
children’s books. We see them, while writing the Shakespeare Tales,
seated at one table, “an old literary Darby and Joan,” Mary tells Sarah
Stoddart, “I taking snuff and he groaning all the while, and saying he
can make nothing of it, which he always says till he has finished, and
then he finds out he has made something of it....”
Mrs. Godwin doubtless conceived her system of advertising direct from
Newbery; in the story of “Emily Barton,” which forms part of “Mrs.
Leicester’s School,” Mary Lamb tells how Emily’s papa ordered the
coachman to drive to the Juvenile Library in Skinner street [No. 41],
where seven books were bought, “and the lady in the shop persuaded him
to take more, but mamma said that was quite enough at present.”
By this, the Lambs indicated a willingness to accord with any
business suggestions which might further the interests of the
Godwins; nevertheless, they were not so bound that they could not act
independently. And, in view of the fact that Lamb disliked Mrs. Godwin,
there was a certain graciousness revealed in the concessions they did
make from time to time. Elia was to discover that Godwin had his eye
alert for any unnecessary element of cruelty which might creep into
their books for children. When the publishers were given the manuscript
of “Ulysses,” Godwin wrote a letter to Lamb, on March 10, 1808, which,
with the answer, is worth quoting, since the attitude is one to be
considered by all writers and by all library custodians.